Bin Laden In Heaven

Upon his death, bin Laden went to heaven, as he'd expected to, a warrior of righteousness claiming his longed-for reward. An archangel escorted him to a large, lavishly appointed salon, where he found nearly three thousand people waiting in an orderly line to tell him about their deaths: the terror, the desperation, the cries of their children who survived them in the night. Each of these people takes bin Laden's hand and tells him a horrible story, and he has to listen. Occasionally, he tries to flee the room, only to find himself in front of a wall of TVs, all showing Americans blithely spending money at the Gap and McDonald's; he returns to the salon, and the line is there, endless, inexorable. "I jumped." "I burned." "I miss my mom."

When he reaches the end of the line, it begins again, and he may hear the same appalling stories of the murders he committed — or he may have to look at every stamp in a 17-album collection. He may have to make chit-chat with a lady who ate cabbage and Stilton while waiting in line, and who is now crop-dusting him so assertively that his beard begins to fall out. Another lady talks for four full days, through a karaoke microphone that feeds back constantly. He is guilt-ridden, nauseated, miserable, bored, depressed, filled with fear and self-loathing, bereft of comfort and dignity. He is, at times, compelled to wear a tutu. He always has to pee.

This is his eternity. Satisfying, no?

The vision is more satisfying, for me, than the news of his death, which, after the initial elation, left me down and queasy. I think bin Laden's demise is deeply satisfying for some; I hope it is for the many who lost friends and family on 9/11. He murdered people in front of me, and the world is a better place without him, so I'm not unhappy he's dead.

But he should have had to face us. It would have made a more fitting punishment for him, and it would have renewed our own faith in the American system, flawed and maddening as it often is.

One of ABC's commentators mentioned last night that bin Laden's bodyguards had orders to kill their boss if his capture seemed imminent, no doubt to deny us the satisfaction of bringing him back here to face his accusers — hundreds of thousands of us, orphans, widowers, older siblings, groomsmen. He would never have allowed us to force him to sit for weeks and months in a courtroom and listen to the families and friends and bosses talk about every single victim. He would never have submitted to the subsequent, massive wrongful-death suit that would have taken what remained of his money and distributed it among the families; he could never have tolerated playing out the string in a Midwestern supermax prison, unheard, forgotten, under lock and key in the country he loathed.

That's why we should have tried to make him.

There is no evening the scales of 9/11. There is a knee-jerk satisfaction, I suppose, in knowing he got shot like a dog, but it doesn't make up for, or bring back, or any of that. If we had made him come back here and sit in front of us, though…if we had quietly, carefully, firmly focused our attentions on finding him and bringing him back here to answer for his crimes…if we had devoted our intelligence energies to tracking down bin Laden and his accomplices, and given them due process, put them into a system they hated and tried to bring down? If we had done that, and only that?

That wouldn't make up for, or bring back, or any of that either. Nothing can, and if bin Laden's death lets victims' family and friends move on, then there's something good out of it. Everyone else feels how they feel. For me, nearly 10 years later, thousands of civilian and service casualties later, if this is what our vengeance hath wrought, it isn't enough. No time machine, no answers, no safety, just a sense that we have to do better.

So, in my imagination, bin Laden is in heaven, because it's not me he has to answer to, or the president, or the Navy SEALs, or even God. It's the people who got there not quite ten years ago, and I hope they hear what they need to.

The rest of us just stay here in this imperfect world and try to do better. Take care of yourselves out there.

62 Comments »

Agreed and well said. That was my knee-jerk reaction this morning (because I spent last night oblivious to what was happening)- I wish we'd taken him alive. No, it wouldn't have been enough, and yeah, he would have been executed at some point, but I really wish we had at least tried.

I've been waiting all day (it's night in jolly old England) for your take on this, Sars. It's the first opinion/coverage that made me cry–in a good way. I wish I knew what to say or even what to feel, and I'm thanking whatever Gods that be that my daughter is too young to be asking questions yet. All any of us have are imperfect answers.

This is why I think even the worst criminals should not be executed. They should've put Goering and Eichmann and the rest in monkey cages for people to jeer at and accuse. Will people like that care about the pain they caused? Maybe not at first, or ever, but boy will the endless recounting get obnoxious after a while. They'll end up sorry they did what they did just because we won't for Christ's sake shut up about it.

Executions can have a kind of dignity about them. These people deserve none.

Thanks, Sars. I'm still processing, and I think "grim relief" is my prevailing emotion, but I don't think there's a right or wrong way to feel about this right now.

@FloridaErin, have we heard definitively that they did not try to capture him alive? I'm sure they wouldn't try that hard, but it would be interesting to know. Given that they were in a firefight, if the choices were kill him or let him escape, I suspect most of us would probably choose this outcome. I agree that it would have been worse for him to go through the legal process and rot in prison for the rest of his days. I just don't know that he would have survived that long anyway.

I was watching The Killing in a pleasant Benadryl haze when my husband came home and said did you hear?

Hear what?

They got him.

Got who?

Man, you really didn't hear? Osama bin Laden.

Holy fucking shit. Those were my exact words. And after the initial "oh, yeah", there was a sense of grim relief and kinda–flatness. Like when you didn't get the toy you wanted for your birthday but you finally did for Christmas, and by that time the wanting had boiled off into resignation and isn't ever going to come back in the same way.

bin Laden is with God. Oh yes, he is. And don't think I mean the whole "sins are forgiven" lazy trope that that statement implies. This person deliberately, conciously chose us as an enemy and funneled his rage and money through how many thousands of angry, used up people to slaughter civilians for his own, personal satisfaction. Not for Islam, not for jihad, not for Allah. Just so he could feel better. He hid in caves, he used two entire countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan)as cover, he died perhaps using a woman as a human shield.

The whole time, God was watching, but not from above or away. He's fused in between every molecule of every person and He sensed every choice and thought and breath that bin Laden took and used in his life, and now there's no more chances to use that life properly, no more place to feel separate from God. And given that, do you think bin Laden is comfortable with God right now?

He probably wants to skip it, to parade and defend and excuse himself, make God listen, defiantly just get started on his burning in hell as long as he doesn't have to face what he's done, what he's really done. He's probably really wishing and begging to just go to hell and not look into God's eyes.

But he won't. You don't get to skip over to the punishment with your delusions intact. You have to look into your Father's face and see all your choices, your real choices; what you did with your life and everything that caused.

I'm not sorry he's dead but I hope I can use that death to be a better person, not just a vengeful one, like he was.

@Sars, thanks for a well-written piece to which I basically say "ditto".

I have to agree that cutting off the head of the snake will not be as effective as we'd like. AQ is way too decentralized with too many autonomous cells for the loss of one person, however important he might have been to the organization once upon a time, to stop their actions. 2 days ago, he was a figurehead hiding out in suburban Pakistan; now he's a martyr for the cells to use to decorate walls and signs and websites, and a martyr most likely to end up on a news broadcast as the justification in a statement of credit. While I'm glad he's gone, because I've never been happy sharing the surface of the Earth with a creature that toxic, I personally believe that the blowback from this could get ugly.

I see your point, but on the other hand it's done. He's gone and out of the world. By not bringing him back, we are spared the inevitable spectacle of him being turned into a political football, Guantanamo all over again. The dithering over whether he's entitled to the same civil rights under the Constitution, whether he's a prisoner of war. The left falling over themselves arguing how, when, and where to try him and arguing for equality under the law for all, even him, while the right calls the left bleeding heart panty waists and Sarah Palin tweets that liberals are all Anti-American and John Boehner cries crocodile tears…We are spared all of that. I don't know if it's justice, but in a way it's victory in the way a long drawn out circus of a trial wouldn't be. I don't condone the death penalty, I try not to cheer at his death, but I can't work myself up to regret it either. He's gone. Done. The end. The world is a slightly better place for not having him in it. And if that means we can move on…so be it.

@rick, that's an excellent point, and I wasn't craving that aspect of it, Lord knows. But if the U.S. wants to think of itself as a bastion of freedom and justice, and command respect as same, taking him alive and giving him a trial is a better choice, in my opinion. Yes, it's done, and it doesn't sound like taking him alive was an option; this isn't a criticism of this particular operation, really.

That said, I continue to feel deeply uncomfortable with what I see as hypocritical, Old-Testament-style smiting and meting in our foreign policy in response to 9/11 (partly/allegedly), because I believe it fosters resentment and hatred towards us, much of it earned, which in turn puts us all in harm's way. That Rambo "I am the law" shit is appealing for a couple of minutes on an emotional level — I'm not above it, certainly — but subverting the same ethics, morals, and laws that bin Laden did doesn't serve justice; it only compounds the problem.

I mean, what do I know. I write up novelty marshmallows and TV for a living. As far as putting a period on this decade, I think Obama made the best of a bad job. I'm…just saying.

I am currently deployed as a medic at a combat hospital in Iraq. The last few weeks here have been very depressing horrible weather, an increase of mortar attacks and kidnappings, and increase in firefights with local nationals due to talks about the US military staying in Iraq longer. We found out around breakfast time here approximately 9pm in NYC, and instantaneously we felt joy and happiness. There is so much that goes wrong here with both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a relief to have something good happen that was well executed. We accomplished something we set out to do a long time ago and now we can move onto the next mission. Then our thought's turned to local retaliation, we are already experiencing increased attacks here we don't want more.

My cousin worked in tower 2 of the WTC. She lost eight coworkers that day. She escaped with the help of the NYFD. When I talked to her she said it wouldn't be enough to bring closure, nothing will those people are still dead and their families still grieve. She wanted to see him face his prosecution and the victims to tell the man how they feel and the pain he caused them.

In a way I'm glad he's dead. He won't be paraded around and used as a tool to further divide our country. We won't have to have months of coverage over what they should do for trial, sentencing, and after. He goes away, an afterthought in history. Not a martyr, just a figurehead with many to take is place. And I will continue to be a Soldier Medic treating the soldiers, local nationals, and other foreign soldiers that Osama inspired. May he spend eternity listening to the stories of the men, women, and children he killed.

I agree with ferretrick. I'm glad he's gone and it's over, and that he's literally sleeping with the fishes. The way I see it is that the bullet from the Navy Seal's gun saved us millions of taxpayer dollars to keep him in jail, put him on trial, and execute him. It would've come to the same end but this way saves us money, time, and aggravation. I remember the Saddam Hussein sideshow and the Bin Laden one would've been a 1,000,000 times worse.

I cannot take any joy in his death, as relieved as I am. And the wild "celebrations" that took place last night sicken me. I cannot tkae joy in a death, no matter how badly they deserved it. And the war is not over, and Obama does NOT have 2012 locked because of this. We have a year and half til the election, that's way too much time. I wish people would be more realistic about it.

I am religious so my belief that this murdering soulless asshole is getting his just desserts on the other side gives me some comfort.

I thought of Don and Sars last night when the news came and all the talk about the towers began again. I wish you could find him, especially now.

I have a mix of emotions- like many others, people I knew died on 9/11, and when I think of them, stuck on their floor and unable to escape, I still get choked up. I am glad, satisfied that the person responsible was finally caught. For me, there is one less evil man on the planet. But I also feel guilty for my grimly satisfaction. And I feel angry that he won't get to face any of the family/friends/survivors.

But I also wish that this would provide closure and comfort, and I know that there isn't anything that will.

I hope that in your heaven Sars, he also has to face all the other people who have died because of him.

Would love to see this man go to trial and have to listen to all the victims' statements. Would also love to see him in a tutu!

But we've already wasted enough money, time and lives on these wars. I shudder to think of the money, time and lives spent on security while he case wound its way through our courts.

I'm glad we finally got him. But I'm waiting for the repercussions. The only thing I really celebrated last night was the fact that it was Barack Obama whose face and words will forever be associated with the announcement — and NOT George W. Bush!

Oh, Sars. I've been avoiding Facebook since yesterday morning because I'm afraid of what I'll see, and how I'll feel when I see it – and when I clicked over to you, I thought, oh no, not more of this. But then I thought, well, if anyone knows what to say and how to say it, it's Sars… and you do and you did. Thank you!

I'm not sorry that ObL is dead. He was our real-world "He Who Must Not Be Named" Dark Lord for a decade, and now he's gone. I do wish he had been taken captive, just long enough to be _certain_ it was really him. Wherever they dumped his carcass, I can picture fishy parents pulling their offspring away from there, saying, "Come away from that, he's much too poisonous for us to eat, don't play in that trash."
I like your idea of how he should be facing his victims in the afterlife. Tutu and all.
But, if left up to me, it would only be in a nicely furnished salon for the victims' sake. It would appear to _him_ as a dingy institutional waiting room, like the DMV, or the waiting room in "Beetlejuice". And he'd also be facing all the Afghani, Pakistani and Iraqi and other victims of the resulting wars, as well as the original victims of the 9/11 attacks. Maybe even have a long chat with ol'Saddam about how he stirred up the U.S. against the whole region.
Thank you, Sars, for summing it up for us so well. As always.

I agree with a lot of what WendyD and Ferretrick said. And Sars, as usual, beautiful piece. I was thousands of miles away from NYC and DC when 9/11 happened, and while it was devastating, there's no way it hurt me like it hurt people who were closer, who lost their lives or their loves that day.

I can't, however, imagine OBL in heaven. At least, not for longer than it takes for God to look him up and down like the greasy afterbirth he was, and point downward. Straight to hell. Forever. Like most of y'all, while I'm glad he's gone, I don't believe this ends it. And I don't feel like cheering, because it's not enough to even up a frigging thing, when you get right down to it. In the end, he was a coward and the consummate douchebag and a bully and never any better. He was what he chose to be.

With all respect, I can't buy into the idea of him being "punished" by having to listen to accounts of others' suffering, because THAT'S WHY HE DID IT. To make others suffer. Why give him what to him would be a glowing performance appraisal?

With all respect, I can't buy into the idea of him being "punished" by having to listen to accounts of others' suffering, because THAT'S WHY HE DID IT.

Fair enough. My conception of him in heaven isn't entirely for him, or for him to pay, though; it's their heaven, where they rest in peace, and can they do that better if they've looked him in the eye and told him, you left my sister short a bridesmaid, you gutless animal.

I'm also fine with the idea that everyone gets to join the line — 9/11, embassy victims, Pat Tillman, Freddie Mercury, my grandparents, everyone. I'm kind of into the idea of Grandma rolling up to him with like 184 bags of yarn and telling him to hold his arms out for winding. For a month. And his triceps are screaming in pain and she's like, "Don't be a baby. LEVEL, mister."

But…you know. You're right. There's no way to punish him, even in our imaginations, that he wouldn't find a way to get some martyr charge out of, probably, and we can't get back what he took.

@Bridget: I love that your son feels that way. I feel how he feels. Kudos to you for raising such a compassionate and thoughtful guy.

Sars, LOVE the image of bin Laden in a tutu, listening to everyone's grievances. That comforts me much more than bin Laden's death. I agree with the others (and you) who said that killing him in cold blood is inconsistent with our legal system, and the image we want to portray of ourselves.

But also, as others have said, I'm glad to be spared the spectacle of him imprisoned, awaiting trial, and being tried.

My sister, who, as of this May 12 will have been dead 20 years, can tell him how scared she was being held at gunpoint, and that she couldn't give the guy her purse because it was upstairs in her motel room. She can tell him about her nephew, then a little boy, now a lovely man, and how much he still misses her (yeah, my son). He can argue that it had nothing to with him, and she say, wrong is wrong, evil is evil, and because of where they are, he'll know she is right. (He can also be horribly offended by her uncovered face and hair and sleeveless dress that shows off her collarbones.)

I agree with just about everything everyone has said here. I didn't really understand how I felt about it all until people started posting that quote by MLK (the real one and the fake one). I have to agree with folks who were/are sickened by the celebrations that broke out; I saw a picture somewhere of folks in front of the white house with signs, flags, etc. and one of some random kids somewhere in the Middle East who were supposed to have been cheering after 9/11 (who knows if that's real), and that was upsetting. It's not the same thing, I think, but glorifying in anyone's death just feels wrong to me – even bin Laden's. And I hate that I feel I have to justify this purportedly bleeding-heart liberal sentiment with qualifications like, I was in DC on 9/11; my mom was supposed to be in the Pentagon that morning, so for 4 solid hours when I couldn't get a hold of her I tried to wrap my mind around the idea that I might be an orphan, but…there you go. I was lucky, I didn't lose anyone directly related to me that day, or in the ensuing wars even though my brother and his friends were sent there a scant 4 years later and came back haunted, if they came back at all, by what they saw there. So yeah, I'm angry. I'm enraged by what we as a country have been through in the past ten years, and one guy being assassinated isn't going to change any of that, I don't care if he's a symbol or not. I don't believe in god, or heaven, so to me, he's just gone.

I don't believe Americans are any better than anyone else in the world, or that we somehow deserve better simply because we had the dumb luck to be born a part of this country, and those celebrations in Times Square and in front of the White House kind of reek of that sort of attitude. We had our chance, some 8 or so years ago, to prove we were the better man, so to speak, but with the administration we had, that was never going to be an option. I remember reading this and agreeing with everything she'd written, hoping that maybe we'd do the right thing, proceed with caution, etc. 10 years later…well. Here we are. Bin Laden is dead, but so is Ian Weikel, and countless other young men and women, from the States, and from Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, not that anyone cares about them, and as much as we'd like to place the blame for all their lives squarely at bin Laden's feet, I don't know that we can.

When it comes down to it, I think I'll be happier when Cheney's dead. I'm not trying to start a flame war by any means, but if there's anyone I blame for where we are as a country right now, it's that man, and Bush, and Rumsfeld. My anger towards them is such that whenever I even see their names in print my vision goes black and I hear that song that the Bride hears whenever she sees one of her old assassin-buddies.

In other news, cabbage and stilton; cropdusting assertively – that is the most beautiful prose right there. I will treasure that line forever.

What a lovely, well-written, imaginative piece. I can remember standing on the roof of my dorm at Georgetown on 9/11 watching the Pentagon burn and frantically taking pictures of the DC skyline for fear something else was going to happen and I'd never have the chance to do so ever again. I can't say that ObL's death makes me happy or relieved or secure, but it did help me feel like we are making some manner of progress from that awful day. Like, bin Laden was a guy who was shot with a bullet and killed because he would not surrender and answer for his crimes. He's not Keyser Soze or the Devil. He was a guy, and we found him and, in perhaps imperfect manner, stopped him from harming people. The fight against Islamic extremism is one that we can possibly win. The recent wave of dissent in the Middle East probably does much more towards reaching that goal than the death of ObL, but symbols do count for something.

Did anyone hear read "Incendiary" by Chris Cleave? It's an epistolary novel, written in the voice of an Englishwoman who lost her son and husband in a fictional al-Qaida attack on London*, and she pours out her grief in letters to Osama bin Laden. Reactions to the book were pretty split — some people loved it, others thought it was exploitative — but Sars' piece reminded me a bit of it. There's a similar desire to hold bin Laden personally accountable for your personal losses. To me it was worth reading for this one gorgeous passage about how London has withstood fire and plague and bombings, and it keeps rising up like zombies because it just refuses to die or surrender out of mulish stubbornness.

*In a horrible coincidence, the book's publication date was July 7, 2005, the day of the multiple bombings in London.

Agreed with what most people have said. I'm not SAD that he died, and while I would rather have him dead than have the potential for a trial being used as political capital for the next decade, I'm disgusted by the people treating his death like a World Cup victory.

I understand the sentiment you've written here, but … it's easy for someone to say what should have gone down when she has no clue how to do that job. It's armchair-quarterbacking to say how the SEALS should have gone about it, etc. It's quite another thing, I'm sure, to be there facing it. I have no doubt the SEALS did their job and did it well.

I have my doubts that bringing this POS to trial would have given any more closure – as your post suggests – than his death. I heard many say: Yeah, he's dead. Great. But where's my brother, father, siter, best friend. An endless trial (with the requisite endless motions beforehand and back-and-forth about his rights, blah blah blah) would only have frustrated most of us. Closure? Something better? I doubt it.

A great evil has departed this world. Let us be glad. And let us admire the Army Forces who so capably keep us safe from such.